Kelly McParland: China treats with Saudi King, one billionaire capitalist to another

China deals with Saudi King, one billionaire capitalist to another

China’s premier Wen Jiabao spent Sunday in Saudi Arabia, on a swing through the Middle East that’s also taking him to Qatar and Abu Dhabi. In Riyadh he had a friendly meeting with King Abdullah at the Royal palace, where he dutifully pledged that China “respects Saudi Arabia’s political system, development mode as well as its culture and traditions, and is grateful for Saudi Arabia’s understanding of and support for China regarding the latter’s core interests and major concerns.”

Not to be disrespectful, but you’d have to figure these two guys would get along fine. China is generally viewed as the last serious Communist government in the world, if you discount North Korea and Cuba as bankrupt failures dedicated to hollow ideologies. But when you hold China up against Saudi Arabia, you start to wonder whether China should still count as communist in anything other than name and pretense.

It’s the biggest market in the world for Rolls Royce cars, and one of the biggest for Bentley, its rival in the super-luxury category. The number of billionaires doubled between 2009 and 2010, so that China now trails only the U.S. as having the most billionaires in the world. Rupert Hoogewerf, who started the list of Chinese super-rich, says there are so many billionaires that there may be more he hasn’t heard of yet.

Though it retains the structural facade of classical communism, and continues to preach its devotion to the supremacy of proletariat, the goal of the state has long since been a head-on dash for wealth, as a country and for individual Chinese. It shrugs off any and all impediments, whether of air quality, corruption, worker safety, environmental degradation or the quality of the structures it slaps up with lightning speed (and which tend to collapse with disturbing ease.) Apart from political formalities and fashion choices, what’s the big difference between China and Saudi Arabia?

You can’t rule Saudi Arabia unless you were born into the ruling family, which now has so many competing princelings that making it to the top requires exceptional political skill and a facility for survival. Similarly, China allows only one party to hold power, and success derives a Gretzky-like ability to stick-handle through trouble, extraordinary ability at manoeuvring the back-corridors of power, and the luck to avoid getting caught in purges that could erupt at any moment. If anything, China is the more democratic of the two, as it’s possible in China to start from nothing and work your way to the top. In Saudi you’re out of luck if you enter the world via an inappropriate womb.

Neither tolerates criticism of the powerful, challenges to official authority, or demands for basic human rights. Ethnic groups that get on the nerves of Beijing find themselves squelched like bugs; individual challengers get a lonely cell for as long as it suits the regime; the law is what the government says it is, and can be changed at the convenience of the ruling powers. It’s much the same in Saudi Arabia: women have few rights and there is little patience with demands for more. Religious police enforce draconian religious laws with the ruthlessness Chinese police apply political obedience. “Reforms”, when tolerated, take place at the behest of the Royal family and extend only as far as the princelings can tolerate. Foreigners can come to work, but can never stay.

In both cases, the state takes precedence over the individual, and success is impossible without official approval. A billionaire who runs afoul of Beijing can very quickly go back to being a powerless peasant. Neither regime is likely to be replaced other than via a revolution so fierce and widespread that it’s difficult to imagine.

The biggest difference at the Sunday meeting is that China remains an ally of Iran, which is its third-largest oil supplier, while Riyadh considers Tehran an overwhelming threat to regional stability. The Saudis would appreciate it if Beijing would distance themselves from the mullahs. China worries about how that would affect its oil supplies. Saudi Arabia has plenty of oil, and lots of friends with even more.

Maybe something can be arranged. Surely two such similar countries should be able to find room for co-operation.